Arms Race
by EgotisticalIndustries
Summary: Step 1: Divide this humanity into 3 power blocs that generally want to see the others die in a nuclear flame. Step 2: Make this humanity classify everything eezo-related until they can replicate it without eezo. Step 3: Fill the military-industrial complexes of all the human factions with antimatter-loving sociopaths Step 4: give this humanity an extra 200 years to expand. DEAD FIC
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:** This story is being primarily written to both get rid of a few plot bunnies bouncing around in my head, and cure a case of selective writer's block I can't seem to get rid of. The premise is simple, this humanity is having a major internal cold war, leading to a truly absurd arms buildup. Their military-industrial complexes are similarly filled with power-gaming min-maxing antimatter-loving sociopaths. The final nail in the coffin is that this humanity is roughly 200 years "ahead of schedule". Also, I don't own mass effect (DISCLAIMER DISCLAIMER).

human derived power blocs

- Offspring of Stars (A society of post-scarcity gene-modded cybernetic transhumanists and their AI friends. They have extremely liberal policies and start owning everything further out than Uranus, along with Uranus itself and 25% of the asteroid belt.)

- Inner System Military Alliance [ISMA] (A coalition of separate states with a standard of living roughly equivalent to a 1st world country with the addition of self-driving cars and highly advanced medical care. They start out owning a terraformed Venus, Earth, Mars, and 35% of the asteroid belt. After they get FTL the acronym changes to Inter-Stellar Military Alliance.)

- Brotherhood of true Humanity (A highly religious polity that violently opposes any form of augmentation. They are extremely conservative on all matters except expansionism, and have launched 6 sleeper ships to Alpha Centauri, Tau Ceti, and other systems within 20 light-years 1 of them was launched to Arcturus. They start owning 40% of the asteroid belt, Jupiter, Saturn, and the associated moons thereof.)

* * *

1 week after the discovery of the Prothean ruins (2164, note that there have already been 4 major interplanetary wars by this point, but humanity is still confined to sol.)

* * *

[ISMA]

"So, this 'element zero' allows for FTL travel?"

"Yes, along with inertial dampeners and some other useful functions."

"Such as?"

"A functional reaction-less drive, for one."

"Anything else?"

"Their kinetic weapons could accelerate a slug to roughly 4,000 km/s with a 1 km accelerator, compared to our 500 km/s with a weapon of the same length."

"Impressive."

"You'd be surprised, the projectiles they used consisted only of 20 kg of inert iron/tungsten alloy."

"Seriously? That is pitiful. Our projectiles have a mass of 10 tons, 100 kg of which is anti-lithium, and they've got heavy armor in addition to a guidance system with 1,200 km/s of delta v."

"Also, this eezo allows for the creation of force fields to deflect incoming projectiles."

"Does it block energy weapons?"

"No."

"then those are useless, unless we combine it with our existing plasma sheaths to mitigate their weakness to kinetic weapons. Also make a variant that shoves the projectiles off to the side rather than wasting extra energy bringing them to a stop."

"Just 1 problem."

"What?"

"There's only enough eezo in sol to fit out 1 ship 100 meters long or less."

"Classify this as deep as you possibly can, and set to work on replicating the effect without this substance."

"Certainly sir."

* * *

2178

* * *

[OoS]

"We have discovered that the ISMA is working on a method of FTL."

"Explain the basics."

"Apparently it works by reducing the mass of both the ship, and the light near it. This means that light goes faster, and that it takes less energy to accelerate the ship than it normally would."

"Get to work on it immediately."

"Affirmative."

* * *

2196

* * *

[ISMA][OoS]

Much to the ISMA's chagrin both it and the OoS unveiled their first FTL capable ships within hours of each other. Also to the ISMA's chagrin was the fact that the one belonging to the OoS was bigger, and faster. Reluctantly, the 2 powers agreed to work together to keep this under wraps when it came to dealing with the BotH.

* * *

2203

* * *

[OoS]

The mostly synthetic OoS had decided to leverage the advantage this gave them by colonizing rogue planets, and using von neumann colonies in addition to cloning. When the BotH discovered that the OoS had colonized the rogue planet that had (in another timeline) been known as Tartarus, they immediately freaked and fired 100 superluminal missiles with a 160 teraton yield each at it (total boom: 16 petatons). Thus the gas giant briefly became a sun, blinding the OoS's sensors (and destroying 80% of their assets near Tartarus) long enough for the slightly slower BotH fleet (who had since stolen the mass-shifting technology from the ISMA, though they hadn't figured out its more... exotic applications yet) to arrive, finishing the job though they still took 76% casualties.

* * *

2234

* * *

The war between the OoS and BotH is brought to an end in the OoS's favor. The system Arcturus was too heavily fortified for the OoS to invade conventionally without taking unacceptable losses, and the OoS didn't want to cause unnecessary civilian death with interstellar missiles. The situation was defused by using the recently excavated Charon Relay (which the ISMA had told the OoS about to hopefully end the war before they got caught in the crossfire) to appear behind BotH lines and destroy most of the defensive assets in-system before return fire could be launched. Afterwards, the Relay is moved into interstellar space before being carefully disassembled and replicated over the next 68 years.

CASUALTIES: (OoS)

~8,900,000,000 individuals

~2,000 habitats

34 planetoids

~5,800 capital ships (5 km-15 km in length)

~42,000 cruisers (1 km-5 km in length)

~89,000 small craft ( 1 km in length)

(BotH)

~18,780,000,000 individuals

~4,300 habitats

3 planets (trope: earth-shattering kaboom)

~14,200 capital ships (3 km-10 km in length)

~68,000 cruisers (800 m-3 km in length)

~138,000 small craft (800 m in length)

* * *

2287

* * *

A dextro garden world with native inhabitants around WW2 levels (though significantly less militarized) is discovered by the ISMA. The planet in question isn't itself touched, but the inhabitants are notified that until they reach space the ISMA will gladly protect them.

* * *

2301

* * *

The OoS begins construction of its own Relay network, the devices they produce are both bigger than and inferior to a 'relic' Relay at 30 km in length, but they only have an effective travel range of 120 light years while being permanently linked with a 'partner' relay.

An ISMA colony ship goes rogue, its suspected location is roughly 12,300 light years core-ward of the main human sphere.

CENSUS: (OoS) (grabbing any systems it can, doesn't care if there's a garden world there or not)

~71,700,000,000 systems (not counting rogue planets, which effectively add another 100,000,000 system's worth)(4,100 ly diameter + 1500 ly height, assumed star denstity of 1 star / 250 cubic ly)

~212,000,000,000,000,000 individuals

(ISMA)

~83,100,000,000 systems (4,200 ly diameter, 1,500 ly height, assumed star density of 1 star / 250 cubic ly)(only 1 in 100 has a terraformable object)

~4,986,000,000,000,000,000 individuals

* * *

2342

* * *

17,000,000 self-replicating war machines invade the OoS. Before they can be destroyed they manage to devastate 23,000,000 systems. Upon analysis they came from wherever that rogue colony ship went.

* * *

2351

* * *

The OoS and ISMA launch a coordinated invasion of the revived BotH, which has expanded into a cylinder of space roughly 5,000 ly in diameter (assuming stellar and population density equal to ISMA)

* * *

2357

* * *

A BotH exploration/mining fleet (clocking in at around 3,000 fully armed warships) blunders its way into a Turian system, and launches a ground invasion after wiping out the local fleet.


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's** **Note:** You've probably already noticed that first contact for humanity is very different from canon in this fic, what with the BotH invading a Turian colony, rather than the reverse. This chapter will mostly be the siege of Taetrus, immediately following a brief segment of codex entries (most human technology is actually fairly easy for the Mass Effect universe to replicate).

* * *

**Codex: Antimatter Containment**

Human antimatter containment systems are significantly more advanced than their Council counterparts. A council antimatter containment device uses magnetic coils and a mass effect field to gravitate the antimatter to the center of the containment system. The drawback of this is that if power fails the antimatter will immediately break containment, resulting in a multi-gigaton explosion. By contrast, human built AMCS use a room temperature superconductor to magnetically pin the antimatter in the center of the containment device. For fuel purposes humans prefer anti hydrogen, in warheads they typically use anti lithium, as it is the lightest element that is a solid at room temperature. Yes, this means they built a fusion reactor for antimatter.

**Codex: Plasma Guns**

These devices are common planet side weapons among human forces. The primary damage mechanism for them is actually kinetic, as the shot typically masses roughly 5 grams and is moving at at least 100 km/s. In operation a quantity of deuterium/tritium fusion fuel is pumped into a reaction chamber, and roughly 20 nanograms of antimatter is injected near the back (for a pistol). The result of that is fusion being ignited in the D-T mix, thus producing 1 megajoule of energy (for a pistol) immediately behind the vast majority of the fusion fuels in the reaction chamber.

The superheated plasma is then violently forced forwards through a barrel composed of superconducting coils, which are there to confine the bolt's movement in all directions except forwards, thus accelerating it to several hundred km/s. Worth noting is that the bolt usually only holds together for a millisecond before popping, meaning that every km/s of velocity is roughly 1 meter of range. A kinetic barrier could theoretically block a plasma shot, but to do so would require an amount of energy that could only be easily acquired by having an antimatter reactor in a soldier's suit and only the human powers are sociopathic enough to do such a thing. A practical drawback of plasma guns is that due to the increased projectile mass ammunition is still a major concern. The truly absurd recoil produced by a plasma gun is also mitigated to levels about twice that of a mass accelerator by producing a transient mass effect field that increases the gun's mass to several hundred kilograms for a brief period.

* * *

Day1

Valedia Agodas was in the mess hall when the alarm went off indicating that unknown ships had entered the system. He, along with the rest of his squad immediately directed their attention to the large flatscreen (it was more reliable than holograms) on the wall, which immediately started showing updates on what the situation was. Apparently a fleet of roughly 3,000 warships had just exited FTL at the edge of the system. Even without the fact that 500 of the unknown vessels were 8 km long, the defensive fleet was outnumbered 10 to 3. A brief moment of apprehension was followed by several mass accelerator shots being fired by the alien fleet. Much to Valedia's chagrin, the slugs fired by their ships had almost no effect, and the shots fired by the unknown ships vaporized the Turian defense fleet.

Things only got worse when the alien vessels started deploying what seemed to be dropships.

* * *

Day 2

Valedia's squad of 8 were attempting to capture one of the aliens for interrogation (and to get their talons on one of the nightmarishly powerful plasma guns the aliens deployed). As such they were near the outskirts, in the northern district that was once the main industrial center of Iratiana. A 4 alien squad was successfully sighted without alerting them, now came the hard part. The 8 Turian squad split, and manuvered to flanking positions before a few well-placed smoke grenades rendered the aliens blind. As bolts of plasma lanced out of the smoke cloud at random, the team's 2 capture specialists applied the Quarian-made arc projectors they wielded dialed to less than lethal energies to lock up the servos of the alien's powered exoskeletons.

It had been discovered that the equipment the alien soldiers carried was extremely heavy, necessitating a powered suit to move effectively. Therefore electrical weapons had become highly coveted by the rank and file soldier for their ability to short out the circuits in the aforementioned suits. This ability was being quite handily applied in the current operation to nonlethally incapacitate an officer for interrogation. That bit went fine. Valedia's squad even managed to capture all 4 aliens with only 3 fatalities. This, however, made carrying the helpless aliems very difficult. This was solved using the truck the aliens had been riding in.

~interrogation results~

The aliens held out for roughly 7 hours before they relinquished the information we wanted. Their species is apparently known as humanity, though they refuse to tell us why they refer to themselves as 'true' humanity. They are apparently faithful followers of an extremely dogmatic religion, which mandates that any form of augmentation at all steals the soul of the recipient. They are apparently an exploration force for a massive interstellar empire, fighting a mugh bigger one they refer to as "those who were once true". Going by that, they are likely fighting another faction of their species that has embraced augmentation entirety. Given that we still have communication with the rest of the Turian hierarchy, it may be that our best chance is to survive this is to find this other faction of humans and alert them to our predicament.

~Human plasma weaponry~

Once we managed to get the casing on the weapon open without activating its self destruct function, the weapon's method of operation was painfully obvious. The full details are in the secondary document attached, but suffice it to say there were quite a few unpleasant explosions. Opening the ammunition clip used with the weapon carelessly also turned out to be a bad idea, as they exploded quite violently. We eventually got one part of a clip open without there being an explosion, and got sprayed with pressurized fusion fuels for our trouble.

* * *

Day 3

The remnants of Valedia's squad had been attached to another of the partial squads that were becoming far too common. The new 10 man squad had been assigned to guard duty in the hopes that it would give them time to recover from their wounds to some degree. This turned out to be a futile endeavor when one of the captured aliens managed to somehow escape her cell, and landed on Valedia's back. She got thrown to the floor and shot in the knee for her trouble.

As Valedia cycled off duty, he went to the mess hall. He arrived just in time to see the wonderful news that the Turian hierarchy was searching for the other human faction, and was sending a fleet of reinforcements. Reinforcements carrying thermonuclear warheads instead of conventional Mass Accelerator slugs.


	3. Chapter 3

**Author's Note:** Part of the reason I write these fics is because I like answering people's questions about the things I'm working on. With that in mind, please post a review if there's something you want to know about this story. I usually respond via PM, if you're a guest I can still talk with you via the Author's Notes. The other reason I write these stories is that I've got far more ideas crammed in my brain than is good for me, and writing functions as a sort of emergency pressure release valve.

This chapter has 3 segments. 1 is the Turian reinforcements arriving at Taetrus, 2 is contact being made with the ISMA, and 3 is the remnants of the BotH fleet getting flattened.

* * *

section 1

* * *

The Turian reinforcements consisted of a full 20 dreadnoughts, 2,500 cruisers, and 5,000 frigates. Even more worryingly, their conventional mass accelerator slugs had been replaced with warheads containing roughly 8 kg of antimatter. As the fleet slowed from FTL to a mere 0.98c, they manuvered into position for the strike that would start the fight off. When they closed to within 5,000 km of the alien fleet, they immediately decelerated with their engines pointed straight at the human flagship. This apparently was successful at destroying the aforementioned vessel, and then all the ships in the Turian fleet increased their mass as high as it would go.

The tactic of up-shifting their mass as high as it would go apparently worked, as it led to the shots the Turian fleet received during their re-alignment manuever only killing offer 6 dreadnoughts, 500 cruisers, and 1,200 frigates. Then the Turian ships finally managed to bring their spinal guns to bear on the human fleet. When dealing with antimatter munitions,the velocity of the shell doesn't matter as much as it normally would. This means that every slug the Turians fired had a yield of roughly 320 megatons. There were 5,814 Turian ships left at last count, meaning that let's say... 12,000 shells found their way to the human fleet. Assuming equal distribution, that means every human ship received 1.2 gigatons, which could have vaporized some of the small craft, but would have mission-killed the cruisers at best, but would have left the capital ships still able to fight.

However the shells weren't evenly distributed, with each of the 600 human capital ships present receiving 20 slugs. This led to each capital ship being the victim of 6.4 gigatons, which generally knocked the human capital ships out of the fight. Please remember, however, that the greatest strength of having a mass accelerator for your main gun is its rate of fire. This meant that 2 seconds later, a second salvo was launched, demolishing 1,200 of the 1,600 human cruisers present. The humans decided to cut their losses at this point, and fled the system at FTL.

**Author's Note:** Having a surprise advantage, a faster rate of fire, more numbers for a particular battle, and starting the engagement by decapitating the enemy's command structure allows for a victory in circumstances like this one. However, bear in mind that just because you managed to win 1 battle doesn't mean you'll win the war. The Mass Effect verse only has 83 (well, 77 now) dreadnoughts total. Those count as small craft by OoS standards, and the Earth-derived powers in general could roll over the Council effortlessly if they considered them a threat.

* * *

section 2

* * *

The Asari-led expedition to locate a friendly human power had been opening uncharted relays more-or-less at random, and had even made 1st contact with a docile bear-like species that had agreed to sign on as an associate race. They had most definitely not found any humans yet, and after that accidental swing by a dead world covered in what could charitably be called murder-bots (which they'd dumped a large amount of antihydrogen on, glassing it) the crew was getting demoralized. There was just 1 relay left they hadn't opened, namely relay 314. As the Asari made craft transited the relay, sensors detected the telltale signature of ice chunks floating away. Matriarch Sarelo then noticed that they had apparently found a system with a terraformed planet in it, along with several thousand large space habitats. When the light lag from the relay transfer reached the planet, the (ship name) received a radio transmission in 3 parts.

The first part was entirely in the form of math, going from basic arithmetic to advanced calculus over the course of 45 minutes. Next came a package that slowly grew from these mathematical concepts to an actual language (complete with audio snippets) over the course of roughly 8 hours. The final part of the package was a simple order of "State your business in the ISMA core system of Shanxi, leave, or prepare to be boarded." Sarelo's response was "Another faction of your race has attacked a colony of one of my species' allies, we successfully repelled the attack, but we aren't likely going to be able to repeat the feat."

The reply Sarelo received wasn't the expected one of "we will need to verify this, prepare to be boarded." Rather, the person on the other end of the call responded with "Ugh, we were at war with the BotH anyway, we'll deal with it."

* * *

Section 3

* * *

Valedia was once again in the mess hall, when a fleet of 100,000 BotH ships entered the system, annihilating the garrison fleet once again. Then something Valedia wasn't expecting happened, as another humongous fleet of 300,000 ships arrived in system and obliterated the BotH fleet. Then the view screen showed, in broken Turian "This system is now under ISMA protection".


	4. Chapter 4

**Author's Note: **This chapter features the start of actual negotiations. It's also a much shorter Author's Note than normal. Also, more codex (mostly the awesome game-breakers you can make with mass shifting tech once you get your head out of your ass.)

* * *

**Codex: Mass-Shifted Relativistic Kinetic Missile**

The MSRKM is another of humanity's ridiculously overpowered weapons. The weapon works by first shifting its mass to near zero, allowing it to accelerate to 0.9999c in fairly short order without expending much propellant. Just before impact the missile up shifts its mass, retaining its present velocity due to relativity, thus striking with several exatons of force. The interesting thing is that this weapon could have been invented by the Council by simply changing the programming in a disruptor torpedo, but wasn't for some reason.

**Codex: Ship mounted plasma beams**

This weapon seems close to a plasma gun at first glance, and several of the principles behind its operation are the same. The difference is that the fusion in a ship mounted weapon is not antimatter catalyzed, and the fuel's mass is down-shifed quite severely while still in the gun. The result is the fusion reactions accelerating the plasma to a degree that could not normally be achieved. The plasma is actually accelerated to such a degre that relativistic mass increase results in the shot having a non negligible escape velocity, allowing it to hold together for about 3 seconds on the low end. Bigger guns actually produce a shot with enough gravity that it just keeps going forever. The firepower of a plasma beam is typically in the single to double digit teraton range.

**Codex: superluminal sensors**

Given the near-c weapons human space fleets throw around like confetti, one must wonder how they are able to detect and intercept said weapons before they hit. The answer turned out to simply be hybridizing a typical active sensor with a comm. buoy. This allows sensor pings to travel at speeds of 15,000c (it was toned down to both save energy and increase the accuracy of the sensor).

**Codex: Gravitational Deflection Projectors**

Just detecting an incoming near-c projectile doesn't mean you'll be able to survive it hitting. The solution to this is to generate an artificial black hole near the course of the incoming shot. This deflects the incoming projectile such that it will fly off into deep space without hitting anything important. They are not often used offensively (much like an old Council vessel's GARDIAN system) due to having pitiful range compared to the main weapons currently in use.

**Codex: Increased Mass Armor**

Sometimes a shot gets through the GDP system on an OoS or ISMA ship. Despite this, a ship from the aforementioned power blocs can typically take at least 1 hit from a near-c projectile and still remain capable of fighting. The reason for thishas turned out to be that immediately before the projectile impacts the mass of the armor in that location (and likely all the armor within a significant distance) has its mass briefly up-shifted to the extent that it makes white dwarf matter look like cotton candy. This absorbs the vast kinetic shock from the impact while also dramatically increasing the armor's specific heat, making it resistant to energy weapons as well. The reason the armor isn't permanently up-shifted is that doing so makes the ship almost impossible to manuver, and even if you can shove it around your delta v reserves will be severely reduced.

**Codex: Earth**

Following the mercifully short 2nd interstellar war, the human home world declared itself a neutral polity independent from the majpr human power blocs. It is currently mandated that any military spacecraft within 10 light minutes of Earth is to be utterly annihilated by the quite bluntly excessive number of defense platforms orbiting it and its moon luna. Diplomatic and private spacecraft are however allowed to approach and even land if they've filed the proper documentation. This has led to Earth becoming a meeting place for human diplomats, and the Citadel races have opened a few embassies there. Somewhat hilariously, Earth being neutral is one of the only things that all human powers agree is a good thing. This is partly because a dispute over OoS citizens having access to Earth is what kicked off the 2nd interstellar war.

* * *

Remia had been assigned to be the tour guide for the human ambassadors. Even as Remia thought that she found herself wondering how such an emphatically disunited species had wound up as the most powerful race in the galaxy. Then she realized, they were powerful because of their disunity. While (most) other races slowly grew toward internal peace, the humans had remained disunited along ideological lines, and because of that they constantly built more missiles, cloned more soldiers, commissioned more ships all in an attempt to get enough power to wipe the others out.

Remia's internal monolog was abruptly derailed by the shuttles from both the OoS and ISMA docking. The ISMA shuttle was larger at about the size of a bus, it was blocky and used fairly normal micro-fusion thrusters for propulsion. The OoS shuttle was closer to the size of a personal car, it was teardrop shaped, and displayed no visible method of propulsion save a blue glow on the 'spike', with smaller ones occasionally appearing on the hull spontaneously sort of like manuevering thrusters.

The ISMA shuttle opened its door first, revealing a male with light brown hair and a beard that was turming a little gray around the edges. He introduced himself as Nathan, but Remia was more thinking "I'd heard that humans looked sort of like Asari, but this is ridiculous!" Remia barely managed to blurt out her name before the passenger of the OoS shuttle disembarked.

The OoS ambassador was apparently a blonde haired lady with quite generous... assets, and was apparently levitating. Then Remia remembered that the OoS favored augmentation quite heavily, and reasoned that she likely had an implanted reactionless drive. On that note, she could have a concealed plasma gun in her arm for all Remia knew. A brief round of introductions revealed that the OoS ambassador's name was Sera.

* * *

Council Chambers

Sera had arrived first, as she had simply flown to the Council tower rather than go for the tour of the Citadel as Remia had been instructed to lead her on (in the process, she wound up starting an extranet meme of "humans can fly!"). However, to Sera's chagrin, the windows on the Council tower didn't open. Roughly an hour after Sera had given up and simply used the elevator shaft, Remia and Nathan arrived.

Negotiations went rather smoothly, until Sparatus brought up the treaty of Farixen.

Sera and Nathan just shared a glance, before unanimously stating "We could remove you from existence with a negligible amount of effort, you are in no position to put us under demands designed to keep us at your mercy. We will not cease our production of warships, or weapons of mass destruction. Nor will we ban AIs or genetic engineering. The fact of the matter is that you were never even a contestant in the galactic arms race."

Then Sera briefly revealed one of the concealed weapons (an electrified spike in this case) Remia had suspected was there before stating "You never provided aid to the Quarians, even after all those responsible for the Geth incident were long dead. The Krogans needed to be modified for lower fertility, but you could have done it in a way that wasn't quite as hard on the mothers. You never asked any captured Rachni why they did what they did. All in all, without the Terminus to compare yourself with, you look less like the benevolent beacon of civilization you claim to be, and more like an oppressive empire trying to keep their vassal races at their mercy.

Nathan just rolled his eyes and said "You always did have a talent for rants, Sera".


	5. Chapter 5

**Author's Note: **A 30 year time-skip leads to a LOT of military buildup when Arms Race humanity is involved, even without an external threat. The Reapers are going to get ROFLstomped. Especially with this monstrosity the OoS and ISMA invented during the skip...

* * *

**Codex: Nova Bombs** It has been known for some time that a destroyed Relay would detonate with the force of a supernova. The human powers of course weaponized this. The nova bomb is effectively the power core of a relay with all the travel functions stripped out. As a detonator, the human powers use a kinetic penetrator propelled by roughly 2 kg of antimatter. At last estimate this weapon has a yield of roughly 80 yottatons **_and is FTL capable_****_._**Fortunately, its only found on capital ships, and even then its rare to carry more than 2.

**Codex:** **Devastator Main Battle Tank** The Devastator is a fine example of humanity's approach to anything military, namely "you can never have enough dakka." Therefore, not only does the devastator's main plasma cannon hit with explosive force equivalent to 35 tons of TNT, it can fire 18 times per second. For secondary armament it is equipped with both the nightmarish _Ripper_ plasma gatling in both co-axial and secondary turret configuration, and 8 tacnukes with a 2 kiloton yield. Notably, the tacnukes are intended for anti-air use, and use antimatter-catalyzed fusion thus meaning they have very little fallout. In terms of mobility, the Devastator has 2 modes. The first is a relatively conventional track system _that can propel the Devastator to 250 km/h with the engine at 5% power_. The second mode vents plasma from the Devastator's fusion reactor out of thruster ports on the underside of the tank. Yes you read that right, the Devastator can fly. This is not often used beyond moving between orbit and ground, bypassing inconvenient geographical features, and roasting unfortunate infantry in the general vicinity as it is far less fuel efficient than the tracks. On the defensive side, the Devastator lacks kinetic barriers, which it makes up for with half a meter of Increased Mass Armor.

* * *

Relations between the OoS and ISMA were just starting to warm back up, when suddenly a relatively un-important border colony in ISMA space towards the ever-expanding edge of the extremely densely packed human space sent a distress signal. Fortunately, it was just 2 light years away from the nearest Relay node, and it also possessed a relic relay leading directly into ISMA core space. This led to what has commonly been called a 'curbstomp fleet' consisting of almost 80,000 capital ships and their attendant cruisers and small craft jumping into the Eden Prime system to find a single squid-like space vessel and several other synthetics groundside. A few plasma beam shots dispatched the squidship and the orbiting Geth before drop pods were launched to the planet below.

~5 minutes later~

Shepard was one of several thousand marines dispatched to the planet's surface, not counting the hundred or so Devastator Main Battle Tanks that had been deployed. It was pure dumb luck that his drop pod landed on top of Saren. As Shepard's squad exited the drop pod, he briefly took a look at the Turian blood smeared on the bottom of the drop pod, seriously hoping that wasn't a diplomat or tourist. Shepard then took point, plasma carbine at the ready and good to go. A squad of Geth were swiftly informed that they were no longer welcome by Shepard's team with what effectively amounted to a directional nuclear blast gun.

~10 minutes later~

Shepard took one look at the Prothean beacon that Saren had apparently been after, and walked up to it. As Shepard touched, his neural interface notified him "an unauthorized mental download was quarantined due to hosting a potential virus, do you want to continue?"Shepard mentally sent the command of 'save it for later' before ordering his squad to secure the perimeter around the Beacon. Aside from a few unlucky Geth squads that got chased into his team's line of fire, the rest of Shepard's day was rather uneventful.

* * *

9 hours later, back in orbit.

* * *

Shepard had first gone to the medical ward to have that download packet checked for viruses. When it turned out to be clean, he had sent it to the psychocryptography department to be decoded. Doing so wasn't all that hard, the people who left it behind had wanted it to be decoded from everything they could figure out, they just thought in a somewhat different way from humans. Shepard, given that he had the original stuck in his head had been allowed to watch the decoded (and translated) version.

The presentation began with a 4-eyed figure speaking "The element, the relays, and the citadel are a trap, designed to ensure that any given civilization will follow a specific path and be easier to destroy. This trap was laid by the Reapers to assist in their periodic genocide against all space-faring life every 50,000 years." At this point the presentation briefly switched to reveal a squid-like starship similar to the one that had been obliterated without much hassle. "This is a Reaper, a sapient starship that takes part in the genocide every 50,000 years. By the standards of those who took the 'bait' they are extremely powerful, but those who took a different path might find them trivial to destroy." The picture now changed to show what was apparently some sort of stasis unit "Finally, there is a bunker somewhere on this world possibly containing the last survivors of our race. Please attempt to excavate it and them, they can provide the rest of the information on this threat"


	6. Chapter 6

**Author's Note:** The Reapers arrived at the exact time they could actually cause humanity to peacefully unify. Namely just as relations between human factions are starting to warm up again after the arms buildup from the last interstellar war, but before ex-BotH radicals in the ISMA go re-found the BotH _**AGAIN**_. The codex in this chapter is mostly based on relations.

FUN FACT: I was actually originally considering naming this story 'min/max effect', but Arms Race is slightly more accurate.

* * *

**Codex: ISMA relations**

The ISMA's relations with some of the minor species (such as Quarians and Raloi) can best be summed up as "come on in, we won't deny our hospitality". However, their relations with the big 3 of the citadel could best be expressed as terror on the council race's part, and boredom on the part of the ISMA. This is especially the case with the Turian Hierarchy, with them engaged in the galaxy's biggest game of catch-up. This has led to mass-cloning being used in a manner similar to the ISMA. In addition, the STG has successfully 'acquired' eezo-less mass shifting technology from the ISMA, which was similarly given to the Turian Hierarchy.

Notably, the ISMA has successfully established semi-friendly relations to the Geth, this is due to the fact that the ships they sent to do so were just so ridiculously indestructible (and unarmed) that the Geth eventually just gave up on killing them. This has lead to a 'zip-lane' of human-model relays stitching its way across the galaxy between ISMA space and the Perseus Veil.

The Yahg have been more-or-less subjugated by the ISMA until they can re-wire the Yahg's brains to be less aggressive.

**Codex: OoS relations**

The general stereotype of an OoS overmind among most of the galactic population is as an incomprehensible synthetic abomination that cares nothing for organic life. This is only partially true, as though they fit 'incomprehensible' and 'synthetic', they have a highly-developed sense of empathy and greatly object to being called abominations. The OoS generally tries to be friendly with most of the races out there (exceptions: Batarians, Yahg) but their mostly synthetic nature has alienated most of the races in existence. The big exception are the Virtual Aliens who have willingly joined the OoS.

**Codex: Ram-scoops**

Though antimatter torch drives offer superior performance to any fusion-based system, they are much harder to refuel. Thus human ships have a secondary drive system that kicks in once they reach 0.3 c or higher. In this system, a large magnetic field is projected to collect large amounts of interstellar hydrogen, which is then forced through a fusion torch engine granting a nearly limitless source of fuel. To slow down, the ship simply stops sending the hydrogen to the engine, allowing drag to slow the ship down. This affords human ships significant strategic mobility, especially with the discharge problem being entirely solved by the human powers as they designed their drives themselves rather than simply copying the design from the Protheans. An improved ram-scoop design is in use among the OoS that also uses some of the energy released from the fusion to power a reactionless drive in addition to the simple 'torch' drive.

**Codex: Curbstomp Fleets**

The human powers have decided to leverage their numbers advantage against the Reapers. They will do this by sending fleets of 1,000 capital ships with 5,000 cruisers and 14,000 small craft to travel the galaxy to every system they can reach, flattening any Reaper assets they come across. And they will check EVERY system at least monthly. The term Curbstomp Fleet also applies to any fleet that is at the scale it is simply for the purposes of having roughly 1,000 times more firepower available than is needed.

* * *

"Wake Up!"

Javik heard those words as his capsule opened. He didn't understand them, but the tone of voice sounded more annoyed and impatient than anything else. Then his translator implant received a download. Now he understood when he was asked "what's your name?"

"Javik"

"Well, you just got thawed out, and we've got some Reapers that need smashing."

"Agreed."

"Fortunately, we seem to have them severely outclassed in almost every way."

"Wait, what!?"

"It started with antimatter warheads being standard ammunition, now we can fit a planet-destroying warhead into a package about the size of that stasis capsule you just spent 50,000 years in."

Javik shuddered at the implications "Why would you possibly need such destructive weapons!?"

"So the other factions can't get them first. Unlike most, our species remained divided after we reached the stars. We took every system and rogue planet within a year's travel range, filled them with infrastructure, cloned all the personnel we needed, took apart our first relay to see how it worked purely so we could weaponize it, and pumped out ever more powerful WMDs as fast as our exponentially increasing industrial base could handle. Purely so the other factions wouldn't have a big enough edge to make wiping us out look like an attractive idea."

"That... makes absolutely terrifying sense."

* * *

Hannah Shepard was the captain of a capital ship in the ISMA Space Combat Force. She had just been assigned to take a task force 10,000 light years above the galactic plane on a 3 year mission to smash up wherever the Reapers were hiding. The combined task force contained a full 1,000,000 ISMA capital ships along with 5,000,000 ISMA cruisers and 12,000,000 of the ISMA's small craft. The OoS had decided to join in too and had sent a full 750,000 capital ships with 3,200,000 cruisers and 10,000,000 small craft. However, it was still a 5 year journey at FTL. They had considered simply hacking the citadel relay open, but that would likely lead to problems considering they would be trying to move a fleet with the combined mass of a rather large planet. Therefore it had been decided to simply figure out where the citadel relay led before simply flying up there the long way. The first part had been rather simple and had been a relatively simple hacking job for the OoS's Overminds, and had revealed that they were roughly 10,000 light years directly above the galaxy's core.

Now came the long and tedious FTL transit from the closest point on the 'zip lane' to the citadel's pair. Hannah just hoped the galaxy would be able to take it until they got to Dark Space. The return trip would be much faster, if only because they were laying down a zip-lane as they went.

~Reaper POV~

"The humans are coming to destroy us with a fleet we simply won't be able to match."

"This was expected, we should invade before the humans arrive at our location when they are at their weakest"

"Agreed, open the Citadel relay when they are 1 month away from reaching us."


	7. Chapter 7

**Author's Note:** The Reapers arrive this chapter. They leave in fairly short order.

Also: go ahead and send me negative reviews! I love debating! (as long as you'll actually try to understand what passes for my twisted version of logic)

* * *

Curbstomp Fleet 1 (destination: dark space)

* * *

Hannah Shepard was tired. They had just spent 3 whole years flying to the Reaper's hideout. They still had a full month of travel ahead of them, when a communication from high command arrived. It said "The Citadel has opened, return ASAP". Hannah made a quick evaluation, getting everyone home through the zip lane would take 3 months with a fleet of this scale, but using the Citadel relay would both allow them to appear behind enemy lines with the most powerful fleet in the galaxy and get everyone home within 2 months. Very much wanting to squish some Reapers Hannah decided to continue on.

* * *

Curbstomp Fleet 2 (destination: Khar'Shan)

* * *

The 2nd curbstomp fleet (consisting of roughly 120,000 ships) dropped out of FTL. Intel had indicated that the Reapers were likely to target home worlds first. As the Sol system was insanely fortified by even human standards, they weren't particularly worried about Earth. So, to kill 2 worlds with 1 RKKV (as the saying now went) a fleet had been dispatched to all the home worlds for the dual purpose of thwarting the Reapers and making the Council races a bit more... pliable. As they exited FTL, the 2nd curbstomp fleet immediately transmitted a message to the Batarian government stating "Your practice of slavery has gone on for an unacceptable duration, either surrender immediately or we will deploy ground forces."

The Batarians, being either arrogant, deluded, desperate, or some mix of the 3 responded by firing on the biggest Capital ship in the system. Considering that by now everyone had upgraded to antimatter warheads, this attempt to destroy the human flagship would have succeeded, if the painfully slow Mass Accelerator shells hadn't been redirected by the GDP systems on the human ships. Considering that the human fleet outnumbered the entirety of the Batarian military, and had an utterly ludicrous quality advantage, the Batarian defense fleet was wiped out instantly.

* * *

Ground operations

* * *

Tank commander Jefferson was driving one of the new Armageddon tanks, which was best described as a Devastator up to 11. It was equipped with a Relay cannon instead of the old plasma gun, it had a gravity drive replacing the old thrusters (though it still had tracks), the armor was made of Relay Alloy in addition to the Mass-Shifting system, it had a VoT reactor for power (and this one wouldn't go up like a supernova if it got wrecked), and it had those awesome gatling Relays for anti-infantry. All-in-all it was an awesome tank.

As he descended, he was forced to come down roughly 30 klicks northeast of (whatever Khar'Shan's capital city is) due to extremely heavy AA fire. As Jefferson ordered his lance of 6 tanks forwards, he spotted those AA guns dotting the skyline. Wanting to make things easier for the next wave of mechanized infantry, a single round was fired into each AA gun. With that out of the way, the tank lance gunned their engines to 19% and accelerated to 450 km/h. As the tanks reached the defensive perimeter, they set their main guns to full auto, and opened fire. The main guns on an Armageddon tank hit with force equivalent to 100 tons of TNT, and fire 20 times every second. In total, the tank lance was firing 12 kilotons per second of hurt.

As the tank lance continued into the city, they effectively became a rapidly moving wall of "rocks fall everyone dies". Just as it looked like nothing could stop Jefferson's rampage into the city, they hit a landmine, more specifically an antimatter warhead with a 120 megaton yield. This was sufficient to cripple most of the tanks, and mission-kill Jefferson's personal tank. The detonation was also sufficient to demolish most of downtown, but the subterranean bunker system was still intact, along with the capital building. That meant it was time for the infantry to move in.

* * *

John Shepard POV  
**Author's Note: **I tried using a D&D dungeon generator to figure out this place's layout, but the result was so nightmarishly complicated that I just gave up on trying to map this place.

* * *

John's squad felt a slight jolt as the Rhino IFV slammed through the door of the capital building. That was the cue for the 8-transhuman, 2 android squad to disembark. Getting out, Shepard immediately engaged the 3 Batarians who happened to be on guard. Though they went down to Relay SMG fire in 300 milliseconds, John noted that they had been wielding quite advanced Plasma Guns. Continuing down the corridor, a heavy mech was dispatched with his Machine Gunner's Relay Gatling. As they reached the parlaiment chamber, John looked up just in time to see a Plasma Cannon near the back rows. There was an extremely bright flash, and Shepard's squad was no more. Eventually, the human forces would deal with that plasma cannon ambush by ramming a Rhinoceros in flight mode through the window behind it at roughly mach 6. The Rhino received a few minor dents from that stunt.

* * *

The Citadel

* * *

Saren was upset. Not the normal upset that happens when something doesn't go your way, but the absolute "Whoever did this is going to suffer until the Heat Death" upset that comes when everyone you were friends with died, most of the things you thought were strengths of your civilization turned out to be traps designed to cripple it, and your !#$%ING GUN WOULDN'T WORK!

Saren dispatched a few more husks with his omni-blade as he made for the docks. Then he noticed a pair of Collectors on the level below the balcony he was on. A quick biotic Lift and a Warp later with some omni-blade shanking mixed in, Saren had a Collector Particle Beam and 2 corpses he needed to hide. The latter was dealt with by bioticly throwing them onto a nearby roof. Continuing onwards, Saren got the jump on 2 more squads of collectors (and took a bullet to the gut, though it didn't hit an artery or extremely vital organ) before finally arriving at the docks. Searching frantically, Saren managed to find an OoS shuttle, which he hoped still worked.

As Saren entered the shuttle, he both had his hopes confirmed beyond his wildest dreams and crushed when the shuttle said "Hi, I'm Eddy, what's your name and where do you need to go? If you're wondering why I haven't left yet I volunteered to help get people off the citadel."


End file.
